Research

My research-focused activities are driven by a deep interest in the interactions of literacies development, technology and teaching.

I am interested in understanding the development of digital, academic literacies as children grow. Relatedly, I am interested in understanding the teaching methods that seem most supportive of the development of these literacies.

These first two areas of work emerge directly from my dissertation research. In that project, I designed a teaching intervention for Grade 9 students who were asked to conduct a series of online research activities, with a partner, on topics related to their science curriculum. Students then wrote a synthesized account of their learning, for a particular purpose and addressed to a particular audience. Although results must be interpreted cautiously because of the limited sample size, analyses indicated that treatment participants were more able to access background knowledge in their post-test writing and more able to integrate more pieces of information from a more divergent set of information sources than the treatment group participants. Because students engaged in a series of five research sessions during this study and I traced their strategy use during their online reading activities, I began to ask about the patterns and trajectories of emergence of synthesis skills, in particular.

I also study teacher professional practices with technologies. In this area, I have worked with many colleagues in the development of professional development experiences, and transformative Master’s-level courses in Educational Technology, both online and in face-to-face contexts.

My CV is included below.

You can also find a list of work that I have edited, written and published, or shared in some way.

You can also find details below about a new five-year research project that I am starting with the Conseil des écoles publiques de l’Est de l’Ontario and WIGUP Corporation (en français seulement).

Hagerman, M.S., Morsink, P.M. & Hartman, D.K. (2012, December). Reading comprehension apps: How well do research and design align? Poster presented at the meeting of the Literacy Research Association, San Diego, CA. http://readingappmap.wordpress.com